Reading Naresh Newar's investigation on Cosmic Air ('Pull up.pull up., #278) gave me a strong sense of d?j? vu. Having worked at Necon Air, I saw how after the demise of Anoop Rana the airline was picked clean by the businessmen who ran it. A once-proud airline was sent crashing to the ground by greedy tycoons who bankrupted the carrier, owed CAAN millions, had huge arrears with the French company for the leased ATRs, and then quietly pocketed millions of shareholder rupees and closed down the airline. The most amazing part about all this is that the tycoons are still in our midst, strutting about in fancy cars, living in villas and looking for the next big thing to scam. They never lost a single paisa of their own money in all this. Shame on them. Now it looks like history is repeating itself with Cosmic. It is the same old story, and one wonders where the government is when we need it to protect staff, customers and shareholders from being swindled.

Subodh Koirala,
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